>>Yeah, here's a hunt script I've used:

start:
put hunt
pause 76
goto start

I made it 76 seconds just to be safe.<<

I have basic stuff like that for foraging and what not. What do you hunt? I tried using hunt every 75 seconds while staying in one gryphon room and it took forever to get going last night. I eventually moved across the river and was able to hunt from room to room and I got it to 30/34 before the other hunters in the area left and I was stuck by myself again. And again, these are complications I don't have to worry about with any of my other skills. I just play and can get them all locked without a problem and that allows me to do something else and not worry about them. Scouting is a chore.

>>Those are self imposed limitations than. Of course it's your choice but then you're forced to use a stopwatch to count 75 seconds which you think is asinine.<<

Again. I don't have to worry about my play style for any other skill in DR. I play a game. I thought this game had gotten away from the "clocking into a second job" mentality ages ago (which is why I returned). I was able to get through so many levels when I first started because I was young, didn't have a job or a family and only had to worry about school. I come here to relax and have a good time. Same as I do with WoW, Guild Wars II, and any of my Xbox games. I step into the game and have a good time. I'm not trying to knock DR, because I still love playing the game and have a great time with ALL my other DR experiences.

>>Timers existing in every game either as not being able to perform actions until it's up, learning, cooldowns for abilities, creature spawn and how much you can learn off etc. If timers and limitations didn't exist there wouldn't be controls in place on how much experience, abilities, creatures people would be able to get.<<

I understand that, however skills that had timers had them removed or were given commands to make learning easier. When I left the game my first time around, foraging and FA both were horrible to learn. I get back foraging has collect. I leave again and return and FA is a breeze to learn. Scouting is the only timer I have to worry about.

>>How long are you staying in combat for? What's a reasonable amount of time for you to hunt before going to socialize? Have you tried using Hunt then hunting to an available mob then going back to fighting? I ran a few quick tests of experience in my hunting area and was gaining approximately 1 mindstate per minute. So if I was hunting for 20 minutes I was able to get Scouting to 20/34, this is with a significantly larger pool to fill than yourself so you should be able to lock it up quicker as long as there are creatures around the area.<<

I usually hunt for 30-50 minutes depending on what I'm hunting and if I have RL stuff to do. I don't hunt for money. Just for the skill. Soon as I lock up I leave. So all depends on all my combats locking and as I showed in my other posts, my combats lock up and scouting is at around 6-12/34 depending on how many other hunters are in the area. I use the hunting down method in Genies, but that is under-hunting for me so I end up having to train other weapons just to train up scouting. I mentioned being able to lock scouting in Genies if there are enough people to help gen Genies. Hunting down gryphons doesn't work too well because most rooms are usually taken during my hunting hours. So if I want to train scouting there I can't train my combats.

While on trails nothing can hurt you. You are for the most part, invulnerable if you are running a trail. That is a huge advantage over any of the other skills in the game. AFAIK, there are no other abilities that can offer this sort of protection.

The problem is that scouting is not useless, most of us have just outgrown it. I personally don't think a huge scouting re-write is really needed. I think we could deal wonderfully with parts of the system being updated for our use. I've always thought that the PTM system was to be the top-end of the scouting skill. Would it not make sense to simply ask that this be adjusted to scale better with some of us upper class folks?

My problem is that when I moved Alexii over to the Velaka; I willingly gave up running the standard trails. Simply put, there are none out here. To work around this (bear in mind this was before the release of HUNT) I starting rigorously using the personal trail system. I found that distance made little impact on the amount of time spent on the trail or on the amount of experience learned from the trail. I think most of us have found this to be lacking when being used for training or advancement of ranks. I personally think, if anything, something should be done to this system which sees little use because of its minor rewards.

Adjusting larger trails that cover more obstacles, while also perhaps creating some trails of a higher difficulty will be a quick fix. Probably not enough to get some of us learning the way we used to, but one must also consider the effect of higher stats/ranks and how that will impact our training of any skill.

It's really easy for some of us to say that something is dead simply because we choose not use it. That does nothing to invalidate the years you did use it without problem. Again, I don't think the problem is with the skill but merely the way it does not scale for us at the higher echelon.

---

You're going to get a bad reputation if you go around pinching every spectral reaper you see.

>>While on trails nothing can hurt you. You are for the most part, invulnerable if you are running a trail. That is a huge advantage over any of the other skills in the game. AFAIK, there are no other abilities that can offer this sort of protection.

>Not sure what kind of argument this is... You cant do anything on a trail. You are as safe running on a trail as you are not playing the game.

Except you are getting from point A to point B without any dangers or obstacles. If the game were off, you could not do that. You can talk on trails, sneak down them, bring others with you, and still stay totally safe from harm. I don't know how you don't see the advantage of that. I guess it's like a hidden image picture, if you have your nose touching it; you'll never see the pretty schooner.

>If you mean for travel, I can assure you, we are just as safe running through rooms as you are on a trail, and do it faster.

Spoken like a person who has never walked into a Fire Rain before. Going through the game room by room is probably one of the more dangerous aspects of this game. I've used trails to bypass invasions, flee from scary GMNPCS (damn Tachid), and to get me knee-deep in hunting without going through some maze or other obstacle. These are all 100% valid uses and reasons why Scouting is not useless/dead.

>It is currently a useless system/skill, until it is fixed. Scaling is only part of it.

Again, because you do not use it does not mean it is broken or useless. Simply, like I said, you've outgrown it and are unable to train it as you would other skills. Scaling is the problem there, not whatever you seem to think it is.

---

You're going to get a bad reputation if you go around pinching every spectral reaper you see.

>>While on trails nothing can hurt you. You are for the most part, invulnerable if you are running a trail. That is a huge advantage over any of the other skills in the game. AFAIK, there are no other abilities that can offer this sort of protection.

>This is a bad argument, especially given how silly-fast travel scripts run.

Travel script or not, those Xala really took out a bunch of players when they were camped on the NTR. Not just Traders. So I, personally, put much more stock into the safety of a trail and how it gives an advantage over normal travel. The fact is that things don't attack on the Aesry stairs or on the endless road to vines/creepers but a number of trails do start/lead to/go through hunting areas. There is a different sort of risk associated with something like trailing from Rossmans to Langen than there would be with say, walking from Crossings to Dirge.

>>Spoken like a person who has never walked into a Fire Rain before.

>If this is the metric of risk, then trails also fail because someone could have fire rain up at the trail exit.

Sure they could. Anything can happen. That still doesn't negate the time that you were traveling safely.

---

You're going to get a bad reputation if you go around pinching every spectral reaper you see.

<<If this is the metric of risk, then trails also fail because someone could have fire rain up at the trail exit.
<<That still doesn't negate the time that you were traveling safely.

Really? So when you are dead, you respawn in the same spot and continue on as if nothing happened? Or do you have to get dragged somewhere or revert to a depart spot, which negates any safe travel. Also you lose any exp you might have been learning. Sorry, your argument makes no sense at all. And running through a room with fire rain has an incredibly small chance of killing you. Room mechanics have been changed for a long while now that minimizes the risk of dying by being in a room for less than a second. Critters no longer snap shoot/cast. Fire rain pulses.

Trying to sell trails as safe travel compared to running through rooms is like trying to sell chopsticks to people using forks and spoons. The chopsticks may make you better at eating with chopsticks, but you will lose every speed and efficiency competition.

Falker

You may think I'm overselling, but I think you are all underselling.

There are still many areas in the game that trails are faster than normal mechanics, not to mention easier. I still stand by the fact that trails move you safer than any other system in place currently (event portals don't count, those are supposed to be safe) and are still very much viable in the game environment.

If speed is the issue, that can always be tweaked. Personally, I find the speed to be a reasonable price to pay for the ease of use. Likewise, if the exp is your complaint; than harder trails can be implemented or a more robust PTM system can be worked on. What complaints would be left after that?

I still fail to see where: I can't train it like I want to = It is useless/dead/broken/wrong/etc.

---

You're going to get a bad reputation if you go around pinching every spectral reaper you see.

>>There are still many areas in the game that trails are faster than normal mechanics, not to mention easier.

Only trail I ever run is to bypass the Ice Road going to Hib (time is still debatable though.), the rest I'm not sure are faster at all. The rest of the time I walk, as it's faster and better.

>I still stand by the fact that trails move you safer than any other system in place currently (event portals don't count, those are supposed to be safe) and are still very much viable in the game environment.

I don't really consider safety a perk when the odds of you dying are so slim that you might die in a 1 out of 100,000 chance (arbitrary, but seems reasonable #)

>There are still many areas in the game that trails are faster than normal mechanics, not to mention easier.

Name 5. Someone already named ice road, I'll even let you use that one.

---

Player of Diggan, Ranger & Halfing of Aesry

>>if you have a bleeder and "bleed out" while on a trail.

I think this is why you can't run trails when bleeding too severely.

---

Player of Diggan, Ranger & Halfing of Aesry

>>okay, i'll bite for 1 of those. <i can't name 5, sorry, just 1> getting to the ranger enclave <not the guild, the other ranger area> on aesry, used to do this with all the time with my TF ranger to hide out in earlier days of TF.

I guess that depends on how you look at it. With enough swimming skills you can get there much, much, much faster.

Scouting ~400 ranks took 38 seconds to go from the dock to the building.
Swimming ~175 ranks took 33 second to go from the dock to the building.

So... I don't know if that counts our not?

---

Player of Diggan, Ranger & Halfing of Aesry

Again, if this is just a race to you than times can be adjusted. If it is seriously a matter of a couple seconds here and there, that can be changed. It has been in the past.

I'm still not seeing where this all = broken/useless. As I said before, expansion would be nice and more trails would be nice. A more robust PTM system would be amazing. However, I don't think anything is wrong with what is already in place.

>Name 5.

1. Ice road, as previously mentioned.
2. Aesry stairs with the trail from the docks to Goblins. No climbing, no waiting. Two commands, scout and go.
3. Rossman's rope bridge with the trail from Orcs to Langen. Avoiding any sort of wait time with someone already on the bridge.
4. 1/2 of Zoluren with the trail from ferry to Wolf Clan. Including all the cities/gates/bridges/etc.
5. All of Shard with the trail from the Gondola to near the Guild. I use this every time I take my Outcast to visit Tomma.

---

You're going to get a bad reputation if you go around pinching every spectral reaper you see.

4 and 5 can be outrun by a travel script. The first three were the only 3 that I could come up with, out of the 50+ trails in the game.

Falker

While i'm about a month late on this for obvious reasons, i believe scouting isn't useless. I use it quite a bit tracking my companion (yes some of us do use them, alot), and tracking people.

You can run trails to train though it doesn't teach very well, but as Falkonis says he's got over 1000 scouting, how'd he get it? probably a mix of trails and hunt.

You need to stop worrying about LOCKING scouting and just do what rational higher levels do and thats get it to about 9/34, go train -a bunch of stuff that LOCKS easily- then boom you're back on a trail absorbing that exp. One poster was correct in mentioning it allows you to do something no other skill does. Mindlessly absorb exp in a semi safe state.

Basically what i'm saying is you can mind lock a bunch of crap and absorb it while inviso running a trail with a 1 second rountime. That means that if said person wants to kill you while you're doing it, they gotta be pretty crafty/quick. It's been done sure but you're semi safe while draining CRAZY amounts of other skills and still moving scouting

(even if it is just barely.)

You need any other tips on how to power lvl via scouting? LOL.


But sure switch it to outdoorsmanship so i can collect rocks and get even more outrageous skills for free.

Thanks!

~Nefidyne

TLDR; Learn to play.

>
Kssarh gestures at you.
Two Ranger journeymen materialize out of the surrounding trees and begin to whisper to Kssarh as they escort him out of the area.